Abstract
Self-knowledge is knowledge of one’s own states (or processes) in an indexical mode of presentation. The philosophical debate is concentrating on mental states (or processes). If we characterize self-knowledge by natural language sentences, the most adequate utterance has a structure like “I know that I am in mental state M”. This common sense characterization has to be developed into an adequate description. In this investigation we will tackle two questions: (i) What precisely is the phenomenon referred to by “self-knowledge” and how can we adequately describe a form of self-knowledge which we might realistically enjoy? (ii) Can we have self-knowledge given the fact that the meaning of some words which we utter depends on the environment or the speech community? The theory we defend argues that we have to distinguish the public meaning of utterances, on the one hand, and the mental representations which are constituting a mental state of an individual, on the other. Self-knowledge should be characterized on the level of mental representations while the semantics of utterances self-attributing mental states should be treated separately. Externalism is only true for the public meaning of utterances but not for beliefs and other mental states including self-knowledge.
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Notes
If those aspects were not essential they would not matter but their relevance is part of the standard externalist claim.
The arguments are so nicely summarized that we just quote them: “First, the core representations of number for which there is evidence in infancy differ from the count list both in their format (they do not represent number with an ordered list of discrete symbols) and their expressive power (none can represent exact numbers larger than 4; see Carey 2004; and Feigenson et al. 2004; for reviews). Second, learning how the counting principles are implemented in the verbal count list (“one, two, three, four, five”) is a challenging and protracted process in which children’s initial interpretation of the meaning of the numerals and of the count list itself dramatically deviates from the adult interpretation (e.g., …; Fuson 1988; Le Corre et al. 2006; …). Finally, some cultures still do not have any representational system remotely akin to the count list (Gordon 2004; Pica et al. 2004), providing further evidence that core knowledge does not comprise non-verbal counting principles.” (LeCorre and Carey 2007, p. 2).
We are not discussing the cases of robots or animals in this paper. Animals are discussed in Newen and Bartels (2007).
A concrete example of nonconceptual representations are egocentric spatial representations while allocentric spatial representations are conceptual representations. See Vosgerau (2007).
The situation is more complex than it has been characterized so far: While thinking, I am able to refer to an entity in the world. To do this, a person has to rely on a cognitive demonstrative relation, a basic cognitive THIS-relation. We also have to presuppose basic cognitive indexical modes of presentation like EGO-, HERE-, and NOW-modes of presentation. But there are strong arguments in philosophy (Peacocke 1981; Recanati 1993) that we have to presuppose such a cognitive mode which can be strictly separated from the linguistic meaning of indexicals. In the case of “I”, the linguistic meaning is given by the reference-fixing rule “the speaker of the utterance” while the concept that is the basis for that meaning is a non-identificational self-representation of a cognitive system which is called the EGO-mode of presentation in philosophical discourse.
We leave it open whether there are unconscious phenomenal experiences or not. This is an independent debate (see Carruthers 2000).
Depending on the mechanism that brings about this representation it will be a sensational or a contingency representation. However, these mechanisms are irrelevant for the present purpose and are therefore not to be discussed here.
Self-acquaintance is a pre-form of self-knowledge because the relevant conscious experience includes an implicit self-representation. It is not a full-blown form of self-knowledge because there is missing an explicit representation of the self (i.e. the person) as a stable object. Representations of stable objects with varying properties are an essential part of conceptual representations. An example of an implicit self-representation can be given by egocentric spatial representations of human beings (Vosgerau 2007).
Infallibility does not hold for the conceptual classifications of the own mental states, as will be shown below. It is just the acquaintance that I have an experience represented by the demonstrative thought token THIS that is infallible. One may doubt whether it is adequate to speak of infallibility: if one rejects that this is a variety of infallibility then there remains none. One may be inclined to speak of a presentational content instead of a representational content since what is relevant is the consciously experienced mental state. We may grant that terminology, but according to our view it does not change the principal representational structure of the mental state.
Such a misclassification is possible because our concepts of pain not only include the dimension of a person’s phenomenal experience but in addition classify the stimuli and their main effects for the person: Melzack “found 70 commonly used words, which he sorted into categories. Some words, such as ‘pricking’ or ‘hot’, seemed to be used just to describe the stimulus itself. For each of the classes of sensory words, the words were arranged in order of intensity; for example, ‘hot’, ‘burning’, ‘scalding’, ‘searing’. Then there was another class of words, which he called affective, which described what the sensation was doing to the victim; for example, ‘exhausting’, ‘sickening’, ‘punishing’. Finally, he separated out words which he called evaluative, which expressed the degree of suffering; for example, ‘annoying’, ‘miserable’, ‘unbearable’. (...) The word “pain” for each person had at least three dimensions beyond its intensity. Melzack called the dimensions sensory, affective and evaluative.” Wall (1999, pp. 29–31).
Such a situation is conceptually taken into account due to externalism by Bernecker (1996). Empirically this is plausible in cases of fine-grained differences or in cases of non-acceptance of one’s fears. Then the cognitive attitude that could be expressed by “S fears that p” is mistaken as “S neutrally believes that p”. Concerning empirical evidence for the non-acceptance of one’s fears see Jäger and Bartsch (2002).
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Newen, A., Vosgerau, G. A Representational Account of Self-knowledge. Erkenn 67, 337–353 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-007-9071-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-007-9071-0